He did not look pleased.

“You should see this,” he said.

—

FATHER AND SON followed him outside. The scene in camp had changed dramatically in the twenty minutes they’d been talking. The fearsome Darood militiamen were now huddled in the most distant corner of camp, speaking of black magic and the devil, and fearfully watching the trucks they’d been unloading just minutes earlier.

The man in the bandoliers swore at them as he walked across the camp. Behind the nearest truck was a crate like the others—except for the cloud of dense fog that rose from within it and billowed slowly over the sides before settling to the ground.

The man with bandoliers stopped ten feet away and gestured for Yaxaas to have a look. Bent nails protruded from the lid lying next to it on the ground.

“It was nailed shut?” said the warlord.

The man nodded.

Yaxaas spotted two crowbars under the rolling fog.

They had been dropped in haste.

Nacay joined his father and the two men peered into the wooden crate. Inside, surrounded by blocks of dry ice, was a heavy-duty plastic container with an airtight seal and half a dozen latches securing its lid.

The warlord was not an educated man, much less a scientist, but he had learned much in his fifty years on earth—especially in the field of weaponry.

“Rifles and rockets may not change the course of the war,” he said to Nacay, “but this will.”

FIFTY-ONE

JAKE LAID OUT a photo the pirates had taken aboard the Saviz before they’d scuttled her.

“We’re missing something,” he said. He was in the safe house kitchen with Pickens and Clap.

“Missing something, as in we don’t understand what we’re looking at, or missing something, as in we can’t find it?” Clap asked.

“Both.”

Clap and Pickens studied the photograph. A few of the crates had been opened. Most were still shut. To their untrained eyes, the containers all looked the same, but Jake’s years as a CIA analyst showed him something else.

“What are we looking at?” said Clap.

Jake pointed at the suspect crate.

Pickens squinted. “I got nothing.”

“Same,” said Clap.

“Do you see how the lid on this one is nailed down?”

There were a dozen faint pinpricks in the photograph, ringing the top of the lid.

“Vaguely,” said Clap.

“Well, it is,” said Jake, “to prevent it from being opened out of curiosity. You’d need to pry it open.”

“And?” said Clap.

“And it’s the only one that was nailed shut—plus you’ve got condensation all over the exterior.”

Pickens and Clap looked at each other.

“It’s in the bottom of a ship,” said Pickens.

“But it’s the only one,” Jake said.

“If the condensation is such a dead giveaway,” said Clap, “why didn’t whoever packed it do something to prevent it?”